Yamazushi

A few weeks ago I read this glowing review in the Raleigh News & Observer of Yamazushi Restaurant in Durham, specifically their 8 course tasting menu which can be made vegetarian, vegan, or even macrobiotic.  !!  Coincidentally, my birthday was coming up so I told Ben that's what I wanted to do.  I called and made a reservation and they asked me all sorts of questions about what we eat and took a credit card number to hold the spot.  I was pretty excited about all of this.  We went on Friday night.

I ordered a glass of wine and Ben ordered tea, which came in this fancy little pot.

The brought us an amuse bouche to start of daikon radish and house made tofu with a sweet miso sauce.  Excellent start to the meal.

The first course was seaweed salad, which had three kinds of seaweed and a vinegary sesame dressing.  I don't think I've ever had seaweed salad but I get the feeling this one was probably better than most.

Next up: stacked burdock matchsticks with edamame puree.  This was outstanding.  Note: I still do not know what burdock is.  

This was our favorite of the night - eggplant dengaku, which is a sweet sauce made of sake & miso.  The eggplant was so soft and velvety.  Perfect.

The fried course was thinly sliced tempura vegetables with fried seaweed and Japanese mint.

Next up: she called this a tofu, but then explained it is really made from pureed sesame seeds, thickened with arrowroot.  It was a custardy texture, with a nice deep smoky sesame flavor. 

The soup course was served in a little teapot, and she instructed that we were to pour the soup into the teacup and drink it slowly, and then when the liquid was gone, eat the cabbage, spinach, and mushrooms remaining in the pot.

The final savory dish was the rice course, a brown rice with some sort of thing mixed in that seemed maybe like cashews?  This is a very informative review, I know.  It was really great, though.  Some pickled vegetables were served on the side.

Dessert was an extremely tart lemon sorbet, served in a hollowed out lemon.  

We were there for three hours, and I would do it again in a heartbeat.  The restaurant is very small and quiet, and the service is impeccable - very polite and helpful as they explained each course in detail and answered our questions.  It's great to be able to try so many different things without feeling stuffed to the brim by the end of the meal - I think the spacing out of the courses helped with this, but the food itself was so focused on flavor rather than portion size, too.  We were laughing during the meal comparing it with your classic American steakhouse which would just serve you a huge piece of meat and potato and call that gourmet.  This was truly an awesome experience!  Happy birthday to me!